Taking the MTV Challenge
"One of the best and most
creative Jewish educational curricula to
come down the pike"
We - all of us - are bombarded by TV and other media images of violence, misogyny, drug abuse, promiscuity, cynicism, hatred. Music videos, sitcoms and dramas, TV commercials, and Internet sites often are what shape our views of relationships, honesty, love, language. The images can be troubling and vulgar as well as humorous and entertaining.
What is the Jewish response?
We offer Taking the MTV (Media and Torah Values) Challenge.
In the mid-1990s, Taking the MTV Challenge was developed by a team that included a psychiatrist, rabbis and Jewish educators, who viewed some 150 hours of the worst - and best - that TV has to offer. The initial 150 hours were distilled into 45 minutes. These 45 minutes were further distilled into 15 trigger tapes to be used in 17 sessions, with comprehensive lesson plans developed by the team.
In 2005, a re-designed, cutting-edge, twenty-first century version of Taking the MTV Challenge was released, which offers new digital videos from a broad range of media, including the Internet. The teacher's manual is now available on DVD, and regular updates - via the Internet and DVD - include responses to new TV programs, commercials, music videos and Internet sites. Alternate lesson plan modules are available to allow use of the same clips to illustrate different themes.
Taking the MTV Challenge provides a tool that enables people of all ages to view the media through Jewish eyes. Participants learn to deconstruct media images and compare those messages with a Jewish alternative.
Along with trigger clips, Taking the MTV Challenge includes a teacher's manual containing detailed lesson plans. Each lesson plan not only shows how to deconstruct the media and their messages, it also provides the classical Jewish texts that either contrast with or confirm the values that flow from the clips. Over 100 traditional texts are studied by the participants in this innovative process.
Taking the MTV Challenge
is an effective antidote to some of the problems and challenges faced
by today's teens (and adults). Educators across the nation, including
the New York Board of Jewish Education, have enthusiastically
Perhaps the best endorsement of Taking the MTV Challenge comes from its broad-based success. Each year, more than ten thousand young people are taking The MTV Challenge across North America, as well as England, Holland, Japan, Australia and Israel.
We don't believe that everything about the media is bad. We do, however, want our young people to be able to see through the mayhem to the core of ideas being presented.
Subscribers receive two DVDs with 18 trigger clips and a fully developed lesson plan for each clip. Included is a full set of texts to be studied as part of each lesson. Teacher support is available via the Internet, and subscribers receive new lessons annually. The first year's subscription is $360, and each subsequent year's subscription is $250.
